Last sunday went for a fishing ride almost 4 months after the last ride. The rib is kept in my garage safe from the elements.

On the way I started to notice a kind of ressonance coming from the engine but could not tell from where it came. At first I thought it was from the cowl.

After a couple starts and stops looking for fish, we headed home but stopped one last time to try our luck. That was when I noticed something strange. I put the gear in neutral and stopped the motor and after the motor stopped I heard a clacking sound coming from undewater.

On the way back it revved fine at 5000 rpm and planed without problems.

After returning to the slipway I checked the prop and after turning it by hand, I found the clacking sound came from somewhere in the gearbox or the hub.

The strangest thing is that after putting the engine into gear, I was still able to turn the prop by hand... I thought to myself "This isnt right, it should be like pushing a car in gear... it shouldn't move".

I think I have a problem somewhere but found no clues on this forum or the Net.

Can someone please help me? What could be wrong?

The engine is 2 years old, has about 150 hours and had its anual maintenance in April.

if you put your obm into forward gear it will ratchet if you turn it in one direction ,and only turn a little bit and then stop if you turn it in the other direction if you are still in doubt give me a ring 01869 326411

Last night I found out what's going on with the shifting. It seems that when I shift the remote to forward and then back to neutral again, the gears dont detach.

When I shift the remote to reverse and then to neutral, the gears decouple and the prop turns freely as it should.

So, the problem is a fine tuning of the shifting mechanism.

On shifting the rod that goes to the lower unit, there is a screw that I supose is meant to do that. Is there another way to fix this like on the 'arm' that is inside the engine and comes from the cable form the remote?

I don't know this engine partcularly well, but as it's a 30 there is a chance you may have gubbins inside for tiller operation.

So, the threee places I would look are:

1) where the cable joins the engine. the end fitting wil llikely be on a long thread, or the adjuster will be there (for external "tiller" gears).
2) somewhere on the way down leg, although I haven't seen that on an engine designed after about 1975!)
3) at the remotes.

Probably worth checking for slack in the cable run as well (I had a set of remotes where the plastic bushes had worn out, so ther was a good 5 degrees of lever movement in either direction before anything happened at the engine.